Not to toot my own horn, but: Things I Needed to know

Little Mark, he has NO idea where this will ALL lead(:

Looking back on my musical career, I realize that there are SO many things I would have done differently. Going to music school out of high school (as Im sure most high schoolers going into music programs think), I thought I would just have to add more time to the regimen that worked for me in high school, and I would succeed in music at the university level. More practice = better musician.... right?

I include this PURELY to show how young I looked(:

Fast forward to a dress rehearsal for one of the horn players in the studio that I went to a little while ago. I knew that this girl had been very adamant her freshman year that playing horn was her dream goal in life. She had a very well written blog, and had voiced that opinion more than once. But since I was the only other person there, we talked a little bit between pieces, and once she finished we started talking a LOT about music school. Specifically a lot about how we came in with one perception of what studying music at the university level would be like, and we were both close to or ending our music careers after a bachelors degree because of what we actually found there. This isn't to say that we both don't love music, cause I think we do. If we could get paid to practice at home and make beautiful sounds and be able to play on our own, I think we both would keep buzzing our lips into a glorified tube and made really pretty sounds using spit and air for the rest of our lives(: But our first serious step into the music world was a lot like Indiana Jones' first step onto the J stone in The Last Crusader: we had great hopes that it was right, but we weren't afraid to jump back once we saw what was underneath(:

So what follows is a list of things I wish little freshman, 18 year old, still baby-faced, untested but willing to prove himself Mark would have known before that first concert, or that first recital, or the first couple months of practicing at university, or even the first couple months practicing coming home from his mission(: It's a long list, but I'd like to think Ive learned a lot in 6 years(:

1. Don't take music as serious as it appears to be: I remember this from right when I started music school, but I noticed immediately that none of the string sections in the orchestras moved when they played. And not only that, but the sound of the orchestra felt like it was holding back 15% or something. I didn't realize it at first, but I was used to WYSO at Interlochen, where either from being impetuous high schoolers or being conducted by Jung-Ho, every player had a little less inhibition about messing up (probably the latter actually(: ) and just went for it! Jung-Ho once compared it to Rock n' Roll even, where the players don't worry about hitting every note as much as doing something completely different and crazy and exciting from the other guy. And honestly, that sound and element of always taking a slight risk when you played because you were so into it was so much more rewarding for us players, and for the audience! And it was what I expected when I first started at U of M. I figured these people were serious enough about music to know that you had to really put yourself out there when you played.
Turns out, they were serious, just serious about not making mistakes(: It's a hard world, music, where perfection of technique trumps perfection of feeling. I mean not to make it sound philosophical, but thats what it was. And if you look at modern professional orchestras, that's one of the biggest complaints, that soloists and orchestras play "perfectly", but everybody now sounds more similar to each other than they used to. Individual players and ensembles used to have signature sounds, and as time has gone on, the drive for perfection has made everybody shrivel up into themselves and adopt personas of the general sound they need to make. It's really unfortunate when you look at it.
As I've gone along in these last couple semesters, I feel like I have broken out of that shell slightly. But to young Mark who shrunk into his own self cause he was playing assistant to the masters student of the studio who had Mark's bell aimed right at him and could hear every mistake little Mark made, I would've told that Mark to at least make the mistakes loud and audible if he had made them(: Avoiding mistakes is preferable, but I took the music world so seriously so quickly that I forgot to add my own personal touch to it all, to make it my own. I definitely would have just had some fun with it and enjoyed it, rather than being terrified whenever I had to play cause I was afraid of making mistakes.

And closely connected to the first one:

Can definitely say I've played on the Big House Stage, with members
 of the NY Phil no less

2. Don't take yourself so seriously: This one's pretty similar to the first, but it's different in that I would have told little young Mark not to freak out so much about who he was(: I was so worried about making friends in the studio and being a serious horn player and being friendly but not to friendly with people in the studio to try and make myself look cool, that I forgot to just be myself. Does being myself mean I dance in my seat to movements of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet cause a movement is titled The Dance of the Antillian Maidens and I feel my groove coming on? Heck yes. Does it mean conducting (inside my bell) a beautiful passage of Mahler 6 that I don't play? Absolutely. And ironically enough, the start of my Junior Year, I remember I came into studio class at the start of the semester feeling really chill about who I was, and all of a sudden people started laughing at my jokes. Weird, it's almost like people thought I was cool when I was just being myself(:

Adam Unsworth is not as scary as you think he is, and he's really kind of a geek:

The one and only Adam "Dad" Unsworth

For those who don't know, Adam Unsworth was my horn professor at U of M. And literally, you ask four or five faculty members at U of M who have played with symphony's and orchestras from all over, and they will tell you that Adam Unsworth is one of the top 5 horn players in the world. Where most horn players use triples when they have a high part on a Mahler symphony, Adam just sticks to his double (#jellylips). And when some people say jazz horn can't and shouldn't be done cause it's too crazy, Adam writes and records four separate jazz albums of his own compositions that make his lips look like they could join the Cirque de Soleil (#jellylipsagain). To say I was a little intimidated by him my freshman year would be an understatement.
The older I've gotten though, the more I've realized he is the exact musician I wish I COULD have been; crazy talented, amazing natural affinity for horn playing, and good enough to where the gigs come to him, but his life is a kaleidoscope of other interests. He has qualified and run the Boston Marathon multiple times (in his late 20s he got to 2 minutes off of qualifying for the Olympic trials in the marathon), he loves just about any sport there is (baseball is his favorite but he coached basketball in his college summers) and he has a very balanced, normal family with three kids and super cool wife. And honestly, he's just as socially awkward as any regular person, with his own little quirks and goofy things he likes(: Probably best of all (and probably one of the qualities I had known about him first), he loves the horn but he hasn't made it into his singular identity. Even though he rubs shoulders with all the major orchestral players and can obviously pull with the big boys (summer tour gigs with the San Francisco Symphony anyone?) it's more of a job for him than the single thing in his life that matters.
Little baby Mark (and even junior year Mark still) was pretty intimidated by him, thinking that if I didn't devote my whole life to playing horn, I would just be the uncommitted musical dropout of the studio. When I talked to him though recently about probably not continuing horn any further, he seemed totally calm about that. He said that nobody in his studio had ever regretted studying music because of how much it teaches you about life, and that it was smart of me to at least see the writing on the wall and know which way my life should go. In that moment though, I realized that all those things he does in his life aren't just a random set of things he does outside of music, but things that he actually enjoys and likes doing. Unlike what we're taught in music school, playing music isn't his job, his hobby, his obsession and his only skill in life. He's a way more complex and intricate person than that. So when I have problems with looseness in my upper front two teeth and want to talk to him about getting a surgery that would require some significant time off the horn, I can really just email him and tell him what's going on. And if I feel like I'm not progressing and need some encouragement, he can give that out too. It was actually REALLY surprising how much he did that with certain members of the studio (come to find out just a couple of weeks ago). I feel like if I had known all that at the beginning though, there wouldn't have been so much panic about lessons and even just seeing him in the hallway, but I would have seen him more as a friend who just knew a lot more about horn than I did.

My hand-drawn junior recital Poster

Musicology 239 can be conquered: Musicology 139 and 140 were no problems. But this was the Great Beast, the Great Kahuna. Theres legitimately probably something about this class in Revelations, when it talks about the creature with a human head but a scorpions tail and 9 legs and four bodies of all different animals, cause it was terrifying. And even when you get a 52% and a 48% on the first two tests, with private tutoring from your GSI (cause you were the only student in that discussion section), one-on-one meetings with the professor, and LOTS of work and editing papers, you can still get a B- in the class without a curve(:

You'll never regret practicing a little more: Practicing I feel like is where the magic of music happens. I've never been one for playing music to get huge awards or win competitions or put my music under the microscope, cause for me it's always been pretty personal. And practicing is a huge part of that. Looking back, I remember that it was always a question: will I do one of these million other things that I have to do, or will I practice? With two hours of practicing a day just part of the requirements, it's a question I asked myself daily(: And I don't think I regret ever sitting down for an hour or a half hour and just focusing on horn. Even when things were crumbling down around me in school, practicing was like my Zen place (note the pun), where I let everything go and just played. It's good for us humans to engage with our humanity once in a while, and I think music did that for me. But it would have been good for Baby Mark to know that he can relax sometimes while also doing work(:

Ensembles are a laboratory where you go for every step of the experiment: Professor Haithcock, the Director of Bands at U of M, who's a GREAT guy, said that before every first ensemble class of the semester. And I didn't really understand that until my last semester. I was sitting first horn on Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and for anyone who knows the piece, there are three sections, one in the first movement, and two in the last movement, where the first horns go WAY high. Like stratosphere high. And really loud. Like REALLY loud. And conveniently enough, the sections are exposed. Like every other instrument section drops out, and it's horns all the way baby! And it was terrifying when I first got the part, because my high range has never been that great.
As the first horn though, I knew I had to go for every part, cause ya know if the first horn can't do it, no one's going to. So I practiced and practiced, and eventually got to the point where I felt 75% sure I could get it in the concert. Pretty good odds all things considering. I noticed though my assistant horn (all 1st horns have assistants who play the high stuff the 1st horn doesn't want to play, so the 1st can save their lips for the important solos) kept dropping out right before these three major high sections. And it took me back to freshman/sophomore year, when I would do the same thing. To (literally and figuratively) save face, you just drop out of the high stuff so nobody hears you mess up, right?
But going back to the rule of not taking myself too seriously, I've realized as I've gone on that not going for it means you definitely won't get it, but if you go for it, you have a shot. And just cause we're music students doesn't mean we have to be perfect right?

When you're a musician, the term
"Practice room" is pretty flexible(:

In my chem labs this past semester, the focus wasn't on results, but more on accurately reporting things that happened. In other words, it's not what happened in the end, but it's that we did everything we could to get the desired result, and then reported the exact steps we took. See the connection to ensembles being a lab? In musical terms, by golly that result is freakin hard to get, and that B above the staff only comes out 75% of the time, and only sounds half decent 25% of the time, but taking some steps out of the experimental process (aka backing off from that high B) will bring all those percentages down by quite a bit(:
So when she turned to me a day before the concert and said she just wasn't going to play them cause she couldn't hit them, I just told her: "well we music students don't technically have a music job yet, so there's no pressure to play well, and when else in your music career can you go for something and miss it, and not have any repercussions for it? So just go for it!" And in the concert, I think we both hit the first one, and missed the second one, and brought it home for the third. But what I wish I could tell all these music students is THATS OKAY. It's really not that big of a deal when you stop taking yourself so seriously(:

Stefan Dohr, literally one of the only horn players I will ever
say I was completely star-struck by

Savor every moment of glorious sound, cause it only lasts as long as the music says: One of my biggest problems with music is that the moments of pure exhilaration only extend as long as the composer wrote it to. I envy visual artists who can create something beautiful, and it remains in it's state of beauty, untouched by time or people or space. I wish I could trap a sound, like the horn section solo in Ein Heldenleben, or the 1st Trombone solo of Mahler 3, 1st movement, or the opening phrase of the Debussy Arabesques #1, or the famous horn solo in Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony, and look at it whenever I need to draw on some store of humanity inherent in each of them. The feeling is even more powerful when I think of orchestras I've played in, and the connective powers you feel to another musician or another section, when you are aware of them and they are aware of you, and you merge together as one for the sake of sound, and you feel the moment suspend, connection and feeling and emotion and expression all combining to create tones any person would find familiar and resonating within their soul. I think any musician who's ever felt it knows what I'm talking about, and you know that words don't quite express it either. I'm trying, but it's a meager description at best(: If I could have talked to baby Mark at the beginning, I would have told him to stop worrying about being perfect and treasure every one of those moments over four years. Cause music careers don't last forever, and those moments don't come often, but when they do, they're perfection(:

Don't be afraid to change your goals: When I first made the decision to study music at U of M, I immediately became dead set on playing music professionally. In an orchestra preferably, but I was flexible on what kind of ensemble, whether that be an opera pit, or maybe a chamber group, or whatever. But as I've gone through my music career, and I've had problems with my teeth and my high range just refuses to get significantly better and I realize I don't really like the social circles of musicians, I've come to realize that music just isn't for me. That isn't to say I don't like music, because if I could play horn professionally for the rest of my life and live the life I want, I would take it in a heartbeat. But real life hits, and you have to make a choice, and I felt better going another route than the path of a career musician.
But what I didn't realize at first when that all dawned on me was that it's okay to change your life vision. I had a plan when I came here and I went for it, but for a couple of reasons it didn't seem at the end of it to be what I had imagined it to be. So I changed my path, and that's all good. I am sad to be leaving the lessons, and the ensembles, and the moments that I think transcend a lot of human constructs we've created for ourselves and for our human society. And I look forward to doing something with music later, whether that be teaching a few students, or participating in small ensembles of non-professionals and still getting some of that experience. Like I said about practicing, it's a personal thing for me, so I'll still keep going. But I wish baby Mark could have known that if music didn't work out, something else was in the plan to be even better. They say you never know what's going to happen on your mission, and that you come back a changed person. Well it was more like God just gave me another path I could take if I didn't want to take the first one(:

It's really nostalgic to write this, thinking about how young I was back then! Man, I was a baby. But like Adam said, I will never regret getting a music degree. I'd like to think that now, I'm a little more manly-faced, I'm a little more tested and tried, and I'm a little stronger for all the things I've done in the last six years. It's been a crazy bunch of years studying expression and precision and discipline, but I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

I think I'm going to go practice now. Maybe some Bach cello suites, or maybe some jazz horn(:

And for anyone who's interested, here are the excerpts I talked about earlier(: Just some glorious moments in music writing, with the times you can start with to hear some of my favorites. Or listen to the whole thing for them. They're incredible...

Ein Heldenleben https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2-dLoWorUs      Starting at 28:19
Mahler 3, 1st movement  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3nxzR87dxE    Starting at 8:35
Debussy Arabesques 1  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fle2CP8gR0
Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXyv4SZmKyY    Starting at beginning, with the excerpt at 2:11. Second and third excerpts in last movement, starting at 20:50. You can't miss it(:
Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUES5PA0ALg. Just listen. If anything made me realize I wanted to play horn in college, it was this recording of this excerpt.